The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners: Derision, Silence, and Neglect towards the Community

Monthly Drone- Free Campaign Meeting: Join us! Tuesday March 31st at 6:30pm for our Monthly Drone-Free LAPD/No Drones, LA Meeting at 6:30pm at LA CAN – 838 E. 6th Street, Los Angeles, X-street Gladys. Note, we are moving it early one week because of the April 7th #DeathByCop March happening on the day of our normal meeting.

The Los Angeles Board of Police CommissionersDerision, Silence, and Neglect towards the Community

On Tuesday March 24th the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition came together with community members at the LA Police Commission (LAPC) meeting to let each individual Commissioner know that they will be held individually responsible for their dismissiveness and hostility toward the community. At this last meeting, they were true to form, pushing our comments towards the end and declaring our concerns regarding racial profiling, the sabotaging of the consent decree, militarization, and sham public hearing, irrelevant to their agenda.

However the community pressure is building and Commissioner Saltzman and Inspector General Alex Bustamante appear to be responding – of course not to the community but to the need to preserve “LAPD’s reputation” as the “new and improved model of policing,” and to look good to the media. In one LA Times article where the LAPD is exposed, yet again, for violating policy with the release of Renee Enrique, the “mexican mafia shot caller,” Commissioner Saltzman is cited that there were two other instances where commissioners were not provided adequate and timely information when officers sabotaged in car video antennas that were put in place as a requirement for lifting of the Consent Decree in May of 2013. In a separate article Inspector General Alex Bustamante is cited discussing the release of a IG report admitting that LAPD is not sufficiently checking patrol car video for LAPD misconduct.

Regardless of how the Commission projects itself, the pressure is mounting and the Commissioners need to heed to our warnings that “they must do their job and stand for the community.” Commissioner Soboroff believes he is pioneering the policy of body cameras but the real issue is that 10,000 LAPD officers cannot even maintain a policy that was put into place when LAPD was under federal oversight – LAPD officers intentionally sabotaged the agreement.

The LA Board of Police Commissioners’ culpability exists not just in the public sphere but in the personal as well–they’ll not just be held to account at LAPD headquarters anymore, but across the city.

Stay tuned for details. #LAPCFAILS

Need Your help – Action Through Social Media

The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition is asking for your help with expanding our social media coverage. Here are some quick and easy ways you can help in the effort to effectively use social media as a weapon in the fight against LAPD brutality and oppression:

2. Once you have “liked” the page, you will find an option to invite your friends on the page. Please take a few moments to invite your friends list to “like” the page. You will see a small “invite” button next to each one of your friends. Hit that button for each of your friends (they should appear on a drop-down list.)

3. Share Stop LAPD Spying Coalition facebook posts.

4. Follow us on twitter @stoplapdspying

5. When you see a Stop LAPD Spying Coalition tweet, please re-tweet using the hashtag #LAPCFAILS